The Brownsville-Matamoros Sister city Project for Women’s Health looked at unplanned pregnancies and prenatal care, among other reproductive health issues in both groups of women (to view the study, click here).

An interesting finding was that almost half of the pregnancies of women living in both cities were unplanned, with about 30% of these pregnancies occurring in women younger than 20 years. More surprising was that 40% of the unplanned pregnancies occurred in women who were using some form of birth control.

When comparing the two groups, researchers found that women in the Mexican city of Matamoros were more likely to receive counseling on contraception during their prenatal care visits, and more likely to be insured than the women living in Texas. However, women in Texas were more likely to have been tested for HIV and received a PAP test.

Despite the belief that the United States has the “best health care system in the world”, it appears that the benefits of our health care system are restricted to certain “privileged” groups… rarely including Latina immigrants, and low-income women.

As put by Brian Castrucci of the Texas Department of State Health Services who took part in the survey,

Almost every piece of reproductive health is based on planned pregnancies. But we’re seeing this large percentage of folks who are having unplanned pregnancies. So again there’s a great opportunity for binational collaboration around a topic that has some significant health impacts.

Clearly with half of the 1,000 respondents having unintended pregnancies, more needs to be done to provide resources and education to women.